Last month we signed up for a walking tour of Schenley Farms, a historic subdivision in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood. A local historic preservation group organized the tour and charged participants $20 per ticket; a Schenley Farms resident led the tour. Full disclosure: I’m a veteran walking tour consumer and I design and lead tours professionally. We had low expectations going into the tour and 90 minutes after it began and we walked away in disbelief that it was much worse than we anticipated.

This isn’t the place to pile onto an amateur tour guide or the tone-deaf and obsolete historic preservation organization behind the tour. Instead, it’s where I want to reflect on what was in the tour and what was missing.

What the tour had was lots of celebratory history about the wonderful white real estate developers, architects, and homeowners whose names are indelibly attached to the neighborhood. These included former university presidents, food company executives, and a popular amusement park founder.